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Florence Tsai
NS Nation Name: New Cobastheia Character Name: Florence Tsai Character Gender: Female Character Age: 35 Character Height: 5'4" Character Weight: 120 lbs Character Position/Role/Job: Professor at the University of Washington, Former CEO of Share the Rent, Candidate for Washington 9th Main Strengths: Smart, Trustable Public Personality, American Dream-like Story Main Weaknesses: High-Strung in Debates, Judgemental, Pissed off Former Customers Biography: Born in Olympia to a pair of Taiwanese immigrants on August 18, 1981. She had a rather stereotypical Asian-American childhood, she would describe her parent's style of parenting as tiger parenting, they made her learn both the Piano and Violin, and aggressively pushed her to be the best at everything possible. When she was a teenager she would work in her parent's Taiwanese restaurant as both a cashier and a cook. She graduated from high school as the valedictorian and would start attending UDub in the fall. The first time she became interested in politics was when her then-boyfriend brought her along for to a not-Nader super rally in Seattle. She described it as, "Pretty cool, I guess." She would vote for him in the general but after that she became political disinterested until the financial crisis. She got her BS in Computer Science in 2003, but continued to her stay at UDub for two more years while getting her Masters in the subject as she wanted to be more competitive on the job market. However, while working on a research project with a professor she became heavily interested in the academic side of things, so she applied to become a Ph.D. candidate at the top universities around the country, and got accepted to Stanford. Her time as a Ph.D. candidate was relatively normal for the first few years, but then the financial crisis happened. Florence temporarily became homeless before becoming a drifter for the rest of the semester. She noticed how several of her fellow candidates dropped out of the program, cutting their losses while they still could before going into an unholy amount of debt. But Florence pushed through, hoping that the worst of the worst would be over by the time she had gotten her degree. On the side, she volunteered on Winston's Presidental Campaign in 2008. She got her Ph.D. in 2010, a year were 9.4% of the population was unemployed. Needless to say, she probably wasn't going to get a job in academia so she looked to Silicon Valley instead but after a few months of trying a still jobless Dr. Tsai moved back to Olympia, knowing that if nothing else she could work at her parent's restaurant. Florence instantly hated it. So she got a number of her friends from UDub together and founded a startup, Share the Rent, a third party rent paying app that charged an extra fee which was invested into the stock market, the profits from the investments would be used to pay for parts of the rent, lowering the cost of rent overall for its customers. It took a year or two for it to get off the ground and once it did, it did fairly well. It was featured on a number of lists and articles telling people to look out for these up and coming startups. Florence was even able to finally land a professorship because of it, she started working in the Computer Science and Entrepreneurship Departments at UDub starting in the 2014-15 academic year. In 2015 they branched out into other monthly bills, such as phone bills, but kept the name Share the Rent because of branding. Her company was about to hit a big milestone on the stock market, projected for September 2016, but the good people at Japan's Ministry of Finance just had to raise interest rates and screw them over. In the ensuing stock market crash, a large number of her consumers demanded refunds, most never got full refunds seeing as a good chunk of the money they gave to Share the Rent to invest now didn't exist. They then demanded an apology, which Florence refused saying, "Look, I'm sorry this ever happened and if I could've prevented it, I would've. But the thing is, I can't control the global market and the people who signed up with Share the Rent knew that when they signed up. I created the company in the aftermath of the financial crisis and it's always been a worry of ours that another thing like it could and would happen again." The stock market also affected Florence's personal wealth, as a vast majority of her net-worth was held up in stock. By the end of the year, the company decided to disband due to a declining user base. As 2017 started up she began leaning into her professorship more as she didn't want to lose two jobs in the timeframe of 6 months. She would help to step up the UDub chapter of the College Progressives and served as the professor who supervised. Interestingly enough she blocked every attempt the students had of getting Rep. Taylor to show up and speak at a College Progressives meeting. As the semester was ending she was happy to hear the UDub wanted to have her teach again in the 2017-18 academic year. Florence was already planning a possible run against Taylor in 2018, so when he announced his resignation she quickly got the paperwork declaring her candidacy over to the FEC. ''' '''Other Info: Fluent in Engish and Mandarin. Political Positions Abortion: Roe v. Wade should be made federal law and WAC should be repealed. Healthcare: Medicare for All. Would sign on for Public Option if various criteria were met. Environment: We need to take measures to become a carbon negative country as soon as possible. Education: Public Universities should be free for US citizens and other taxpayers. Gun Control: Universal Background Checks, non-Mandatory Buyback Program, Mandatory Gun Registry, and Smart Guns. Social Security: Stop using it as the de facto National ID, create an actual National ID. Electoral Reform: Automatic Voter Registration, Use National ID as Voter ID, Overturn Citizens United, STV and Proportionalism for the Senate, MMP with STV District Elections for the House, IRV for Presidency, Abolish the Vice Presidency. Budget: Less spending on Military and Foreign Aid to First World Countries./spoiler